blog post #1
October 29, 2009 by slambert
My favorite genre of food is seafood; shrimp, crabs, scallops, and especially lobsters. Anyway seafood was cooked whether it was fried, boiled, sauteed, etc, it all tasted great. After reading David Foster Wallace’s critique “Consider the Lobster”, eating lobster or any type of seafood for that matter is not as appealing to me anymore. David Foster Wallace disucsses the ethical question is it morally right to kill the animals and treat them different than we would a human life. Wallace shows the controversy of whether or not the lobster actually feels pain. Some people say it is morally acceptable to kill the lobster because they dont feel pain. While on the other hand others say it is morally wrong to kill lobsters because they do experience the pain and people who say they dont are basically trying to hide the truth in order to justify their answer. I believe the lobsters do feel pain especially when they are being boiled. Wallace discusses in his critique of the Maine Lobster Festival that the most common way to cook and lobster is by boiling it. He describes the lobsters actions of it putting its claws on the rim of the pot to try and prevent itself from going into the hot water and even when it is in the water the pot shakes due to the lobster feeling uncomfortable and trying to escape. Picturing this scenario alone made me realize that whether is they fell “pain” or if they are just “uncomfortable” its not something the lobster wants to experience. Just like humans, lobsters have the instinct of survival. I feel that since they act human like in some way we should treat lobsters as well as every other animal like humans in that we dont kill them for our own selfish reasons. If we treated lobsters like we treated humans, we would be put in jail. Since reading this article, I have not eaten lobster and actually feel uncomfortable seeing a lobster in the store knowing they are going to eventually be killed and cooked. This article has definitely changed my perception on animals lives and how they are just as precious as we consider our lives.